Augmented reality app to “bring passports to life”

British passport holders can now see a 3D aircraft, common phrases and play a holiday-inspired game all through scanning their document with an app.

Blippar has typically been used in newspapers and magazines to provide extra information for readers, and has now created a function that provides content from passports.

Using the Blippar app, travellers can scan their passport to see several games, a 3D animated aircraft and common phrases with phonetic pronunciations which it hopes will keep children (and probably adults) entertained in the departure lounge.

“With 14 million UK holidaymakers expected to go abroad this summer, we wanted to create something fun, informative and engaging that any person travelling abroad could use. Kids often get bored at the airport and we wanted parents to be able to concentrate on enjoying their holidays and having fun with their kids instead of being stressed out,” said Jess Butcher, CMO of Blippar.

Travellers will not need to buy a new passport to see the features and can access the content by downloading the Blippar app (available on iOS or Android) and scanning the front of their passport.

Butcher added that as smartphone use becomes commonplace, the company is seeing more awareness of augmented reality and a “cultural shift” in the type of content they want to interact with.

“This blipp demonstrates that this technology isn’t just about advertising and media and image recognition technology can effectively ‘digitise’ any everyday object like a passport, simply by looking at it through the device,” she added.